Dangerous Words in a Foreign Language
by DarthLuna
Summary: It's their sixth year at Hogwarts, and both Draco and Hermione are desperately seeking temporary escape from their friends, their families and their socalled lives. HalfBlood Princecompliant. Inspired by Argosy's drabble of the same name.


A/N: Based on Argosy's drabble of the same title. Thanks to her for letting me write this. And thanks to the learned HarmonyBites for the sharp and speedy beta-treatment. This is set sometime between Chapter Fourteen: 'Felix Felicis' and Chapter Fifteen: 'The Unbreakable Vow' of _Half-Blood Prince_. The dates used in this story are drawn from the timeline for Book Six at the Harry Potter Lexicon. 

Drabble: Dangerous Words in A Foreign Language by Argosy  
Hogwarts, 7 November 1996

"I'm not the one who read the bloody thing out loud."

"Not helpful, Malfoy... What do we do now?"

_Shrug._ "What it says, I suppose."

"I'm not going to --" _Shudder._

"Stay here then, shall we? In the black void?"

Sigh. "I didn't mean to --"

"Right. How could reciting ancient Sumatran sex magic texts cause trouble? Not like you're a witch or anything."

"Malfoy --"

"Knew what they were on about privacy-wise. Hellooooo..."

_Long pause. Fidget._

"Let's get on with it. I want to get back."

_Kiss. Mmph. Squish._

"Mmm... Those ancient Sumatrans were all right."

"Shut it, Malfoy."

1. The Unorthodox Use of Reference Volumes  
Hogwarts, 7 November 1996

_Evelyn: It's just a book. No harm ever came from reading a book._

_-- The Mummy Returns (1999)_

It was wrong and vile. It was like mating Crups with Kneazles. It was against all laws of nature and man. And if word ever got out of its completely unintentional, utterly unavoidable and absolutely, positively never-to-be-repeated occurrence, Hermione would have to move to some very, very far away cave. The sort that went with animal skin couture and a strict roots and rodent diet.

Crouched behind the Restricted Section's penultimate bookcase, Hermione wanded shut her skirt and robes. She recalled the Welcoming Feast of two months before, where Malfoy had sat sprawled at his House table, miming the despicable, opportunistic beating he had given Harry on the Hogwarts Express. With a nauseating rush of panic, she suddenly pictured Malfoy holding forth in the Great Hall tomorrow, gesturally re-enacting their recent copulation to sundry Slytherins over breakfast. She imagined Malfoy demonstrating key moments, using toast and tableware as props, while Vincent Crabbe guffawed and Gregory Goyle snorted in his pumpkin juice. Hermione shuddered. "Malfoy," she said, "if you tell _anyone_--"

"What? That I just soiled my eleventh-generation, undiluted wizard body with a Mudblooded Girl Guide?" Malfoy snorted as he slouched against the opposite bookshelf, buttoning his trousers. "Oh, right. Definitely taking out the full-page advert to announce that one."

In the black void Malfoy's mouth had been unrecognisably soft, his hands astonishingly gentle. But back in the ordinary world, he had immediately reverted to his true and natural form: that of a shallow, racist, self-involved prick. It would have almost been reassuring, if the situation weren't so mortifying.

Because she was Hermione Granger: Muggle-born Gryffindor, House-Elf Rights Activist, and Second-Best Friend of Harry Potter. He was Draco Malfoy: Pure-blood Slytherin, Pathetic Death Eater Wannabe and Official Term-Time Irritant to Harry, Ron and Herself. And they had just had sex. Sex with a slew of mitigating circumstances to be sure. It had been Counter-spell Sex, Self-Preservation Sex, Sex in the Face of Dire Magical Necessity (perhaps even Lie Back and Think of the Order of the Phoenix Sex, though, Hermione had to admit upon reflection, probably not).

Whatever. However. Nonetheless. She, Hermione Granger, and he, Draco Malfoy, had had sex. With each other. And while it might be a plausible premise, that a morbid Muggle-phobe like Malfoy wouldn't rush to brag to his fellow magical inbreds about their little...accident, it was a known fact that men's reputations never really suffered, no matter who they shagged. Malfoy might not immediately spill the news to his nearest and dearest Slytherins. But he wouldn't hesitate to drop the information like a little bomb, detonated when, where and to whom it would cause the most damage.

In fact, he could pretty much be counted on to do exactly that.

And that Hermione could not allow to happen. So, with 74 percent of her brain devising possible ways of persuading him to take a wizard's oath and other 26 percent calculating her chances of casting a successful _Obliviate_, Hermione drew her wand. "Malfoy, I'm quite serious..."

Malfoy looked at her. He looked at her wand. Then clapping a hand over his mouth, he burst into silent, shuddering spasms of laughter.

Hermione glared at him. Strike _Obliviate_, she decided. Maybe she would give _Avada Kedavra_ a go.

"You really have no idea, do you?" he said finally.

"What are you babbling about?" she asked, irritably.

"Oh, you know-- just ancient Sumatran sex-magic and small black pockets of ensorcelled space-time?"

"And again, Malfoy, I ask--"

"_Privacy_. The black void doesn't just supply privacy. It _is_ privacy. What happens there can never be told to anyone elsewhere. Ever. By either of us. Which of course you would know, had you been arsed to actually skim the commentary and do a proper translation before barging in and blithering it aloud--"

_What happens there can never be told to anyone elsewhere._ Could it be true? Hermione mused. She glanced down at the small Sumatran tome, its inky selkie-skin binding clutched in her left hand, her middle finger squeezed between the leaves of the black void's spell and counterspell. She stifled the urge to throw it open and check; she simply couldn't give Malfoy the satisfaction.

It would be good if it were true. Awfully, awfully good. Rather too good, really.

That fact alone made such luck seem extraordinary unlikely. "So you mean to say-- you can't tell anyone, anyone at all, about anything that we just did?" she asked skeptically.

"Honestly, Granger." Shaking his head, Malfoy turned and began shovelling books into his satchel. "I know you're a bit off your game of late. But I was using small words and everything."

Once again, Hermione was struck with the urge to 'blither aloud' a few choice Unforgivables. "Malfoy--" she murmured warningly.

"And would you much mind putting the wand away?" Malfoy said mildly, without looking up. He flipped briefly through a copy of _Portal Power: Making Floo Technology Work for You_, before dropping it into his satchel, where it appeared to join the rest of what had been the Restricted Section's Magical Transport shelf. "I'd hate for you to sneeze and accidentally conjure a rabid Graphorn. Morgana only knows what it would do to Madam Pince's ungulate allergies. And the answer is no. I can't say a single word about it--to anyone but you. If you don't believe me, try sharing the news yourself. Or--here's a thought-- try _reading the footnotes_."

Defeated, Hermione pocketed her wand and blinked back the sudden rush of angry, embarrassed tears. Outgeeked. Oh, God. She had just been _outgeeked_ by Malfoy. And somehow that was infinitely worse than the fact that she had just had awkward, obligatory, ritual sex with the boy she most loathed in this and all other pockets of space-time. Because she was Hermione Granger. And pathetic Death Eater wannabes didn't run verbal rings around her. Sorry, inbred Slytherins didn't catch her intellectually off-guard, with her translations undone and her footnotes unread. Ever.

Ever, except apparently, today.

"I am going to examine the text--" Hermione said.

"Excellent. You do that."

"If you're lying, Malfoy--"

"You'll do what?" Malfoy asked dryly, as he sorted through reprints of _Extradimensional Spelunking for Beginners_. "Corner me in a broom closet?"

"No. But you might take to living in one, once I've finished hexing you."

"You mean, as in Marietta Edgecombe?" Malfoy raised one ice-blond eyebrow, as he shoehorned a final volume of _The Journal of Interdimensional and Interplanar Magic_ into the side-pouch of his satchel. "Yes, I guess that was one nicely virulent piece of cursework. Look, Granger." He slung the monstrously overstuffed bag onto his shoulder. "It's been..."

His mouth quirked: a sly half-smile. His grey eyes finally rose from his books to her face, though they took time perusing her figure on the route upwards. "_Interesting_," he said at last.

Hermione flushed, reminded of his searching fingers, roaming mouth, and...other anatomical parts. Bits of Malfoy's body she had never wanted to encounter, under any circumstances. Bits she never wanted to think about, ever again.

"But you know how it is," Malfoy said in that same insufferably smug, lazy tone, "some of us have lives--"

"Right," she said. "Lovely. Let's definitely _never_ do this again soon."

"As you say." And with a smirk and a shrug, Malfoy turned and strolled away, towards the door to the main hall of the library. Well, not so much strolled as strutted, Hermione thought, watching as each loping step advertised the length of Malfoy's legs and the broadness of his shoulders.

"Malfoy--" Hermione called out impulsively, before he could reach the door. "Just what do you think you mean: 'off my game of late'?"

Hermione could not explain how on earth Malfoy's facial expression managed to be at once both smug and searching. But-- as he stopped and turned to answer her-- it did. Nor could she explain why she was asking the question-- why, in fact, she was doing anything to prolong her time in Ferret-Boy's presence. But she was.

"Well," he drawled after a long pause, "it's a bit hard to miss, isn't it?"

"What?" she asked. Malfoy's eyes fixed themselves on hers: cool, incredulous, faintly amused. She felt a warning thrill shoot up her spine. Everything in Malfoy's look told her to drop it.

So, of course, she kept on going. "What's hard to miss?" she asked again.

"Come now," he said, "you _know_-- the constant, public snogging, fondling, squishing and slurping-- I refer of course to Miss Brown and the 'Won-Won'," his fingers formed quotation marks, "formerly known as 'Weasel'."

For a moment that felt like forever, the world-- or perhaps just the Restricted Section-- keeled about Hermione's feet. He couldn't know this. Granted, even Malfoy couldn't miss the physical fact of Ron and Lavender's coupling. Their snogging was so loud, so blatant and so omnipresent that probably even Professor Binns had taken note.

But there was no way Malfoy could know that Hermione _cared_.

Yes, Harry knew it. Ginny knew it. Luna Lovegood-- whose warped mind mysteriously managed to collect quite a few inconvenient and disturbingly perceptive observations about other people each day before breakfast-- knew it. But not Malfoy. Malfoy couldn't know what she felt about Ron. Malfoy wasn't a friend. Malfoy wasn't even an acquaintance. And Malfoy definitely wasn't allowed to see...to understand things about her. Especially not this thing.

Hermione tried looking through the twin windows into whatever it was that passed for Malfoy's soul. She looked, and she knew beyond a doubt...that Malfoy knew. That she wanted Ron. That she had always wanted Ron. And that she was angry, humiliated and beyond miserable. For a fleeting second, she thought she saw in Malfoy's gaze something impossibly close to pity. But it dissolved, like a trick of the light, leaving only the usual steely-coloured contempt.

"It must be quite the shock. I mean, what can he possibly see in her?" Malfoy goggled theatrically. "Aside from the gorgeous hair, fantastic tits, and the four-generation magical bloodline? Hmm...well, I suppose there's the fact that she's _not a bossy swot_--'"

There was no conscious decision-making involved in the act of chucking the Sumatran spell book at Malfoy's head. One moment Hermione was holding it; the next it was blasting through the air towards its target. The book had apparently been bespelled to prevent abuse: upon impact it belched a massive cloud of greenish-blue smoke that stank foully of moulded curry and unwashed feet.

"Ooops," Hermione said sweetly, as Malfoy staggered and coughed. Then she plunged her hand in her wand-pocket, waiting for Malfoy to explode with a classic burst of shrill and haughty rage, to lash out with hexes and expletives.

But of all the surprises in an unpleasantly surprising day, this was the biggest: Malfoy scarcely reacted at all. No self-important fuming, no ugly threats, no curses hurled or hexes spat, no 'my father's or 'you'll pay for that-- you filthy Mudblood' s. Instead, for a moment Malfoy simply stood, blank-faced, his free hand fanning off the stink-cloud of foot-fungus and rotting take-away. Then, with an almost studied slowness, he bent and picked up the Sumatran magical _Sutra_ Hermione had flung a moment before. "Thanks Granger," he said, with a painfully twisted smile, as he slipped the spellbook into his bag. "I was hoping for a chance to check this one out."

Sauntering to the door, Malfoy called out behind him: "A word of advice: if you want to rain down sexual dysfunction on Weasel and The Weed, forget the _Sutras_. For a rank beginner such as yourself, I'd suggest one of the Voudoun miscellanies. Or perhaps Blackheart's _Eros Made Pestilence_, volumes two and three..."

Hermione stared, eyes burning, cheeks steaming, as Malfoy passed from view. Cockroach, she thought, her insides aching with the litres and litres of unshed tears, collecting inside her ever since Ron had started dating the second-most vacuous girl in their year. Ferret. Smug, smirking, pointy-faced little albino...creep.


End file.
